Building a Passion for Achievement
Important to remember is that the performance metrics needed by one IT organization are not the metrics of another. The needs of the company should drive the focus of what IT needs to improve upon and thus the metrics that need to be established to measure, monitor and calibrate performance.
Whatever the metrics developed, the CIO needs to be sure that they remain the focus of day-to-day work. Achieving the performance goal is the job. Individual performance evaluations, weekly staff meetings, monthly status reports and the like focus on the suite of metrics in play. Alignment will only occur if the focus is constant, steady and relentless. There is an intensity that needs to be shared, a focused urgency among the IT organization if success is to be attained.
To this end, CIOs must lead, coach and cheer their staff onward. The goals established and the metrics used to measure success must become the passion of the organization. In essence, the performance measures are woven into the fabric of the work lives of everyone.
When achieved, miraculous things happen. People enjoy their jobs, empathy, communications and cooperation improves; life gets good (well, at least less stressful).
So metrics can be a good thing or a bad thing depending how they are approached and balanced. Integrating metrics into the incentive compensation system and weighting them based on a balanced scorecard approach all contribute to the value they can deliver to an organization. Most of all, designing performance management and supporting metrics systems using a cross-functional, stakeholder-value driven approach is the single most critical factor in insuring success with metrics.
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Paying
Attention to Paradigm Shifts Can Pay Big Dividends